1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method, system, and program for storing and using metadata in multiple storage locations.
2. Description of the Related Art
In certain computing environments, multiple host systems may communicate with multiple control units, such as an IBM Enterprise Storage Server (ESS)®, for data in a storage device managed by the ESS receiving the request, providing access to storage devices, such as interconnected hard disk drives through one or more logical paths. (IBM and ESS are registered trademarks of IBM). The interconnected drives may be configured as a Direct Access Storage Device (DASD), Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID), Just a Bunch of Disks (JBOD), etc. The control units maintain critical metadata in local storage that is needed to determine the configuration of the system. If the critical metadata is corrupted, invalid or unavailable, then the control unit will fail and may have to be completely reconfigured. The critical metadata is typically hidden from the host system and only available to the control unit operating system.